Toodledo Slim Application

First of all, I am a GTDer and use Toodledo with the GTD System in mind. I perform my weekly review and decide what task I will be taklin for the week. With that said, I rather not enter the full Toodledo site to simply check off task as I complete them or to take a look at my list.

This is where the iGoogle Gadget was useful. I love the Slim interface of the gadget because it allows me to do what I need during the week, without having to see everything. The only problem is that the Gadget lives in my iGoogle page which can be a distraction in itself. I am tempted to read Gmail or my Google Reader feeds while I am there. This is counter productive and does not let me "Get Things Done".

So what do I do?

Thanks to the Toodledo Team. They have a Slim version of the website that is identical to the iGoogle Gadget. This is great except for one thing. It's opens as large as my browser window and this leaves allot of blank space.

So what do I do now?

Using Firefox. I am able to take advantage of a great extension called "Refractor for Prism". What this extension does, it allows you to create any standard website as an application you launch from your Desktop via. an icon. The advantage here is that the URL Address bar and all other areas of the web browser are not shown. This is also something you can toggle when creating the application, but the defaults create what appears to be a standard application of a website.

What I did is use "Refractor for Prism" to create an application of the Toodledo Slim website and now I have an icon on my desktop that launches the Slim site with none of the Web Browser portions and looks exactly like the iGoogle Gadget. I can size this to be smaller and place it where I like on my desktop. When you launch the application, it remembers the way you sized it, giving me a small iGoogle Gadget that runs stand alone on my desktop.

This has proven to be very productive for me and I wanted to share it with you guys.

What I did is use "Refractor for Prism" to create an application of the Toodledo Slim website and now I have an icon on my desktop that launches the Slim site with none of the Web Browser portions and looks exactly like the iGoogle Gadget. I can size this to be smaller and place it where I like on my desktop. When you launch the application, it remembers the way you sized it, giving me a small iGoogle Gadget that runs stand alone on my desktop.

Thank you for the very cool trick. I liked the desktop solutions that some other forum members created and posted about in this forum, but unfortunately, the necessary .net framework update did not agree with my computer.

So what I have been trying is just opening up a separate browser window in firefox set to Toodledo slim, and left in full screen (real fullscreen thanks to another addon), and then just resized the window(possible because I'm not using the usual FF fullscreen view). This idea sounds even better though.

Firefox is absolutely the best thing on the planet(except perhaps Toodledo).

I've just started using Prism for this purpose too; like Proximo I find it too easy to get distracted if I have a full webrowser open unnecessarily, so Prism's very handy to keep me focused!

I had experimented with Bubbles, a similar app to Prism but with the advantage of a scripting facility that lets you add extra functionality (they have a number of pre-written scripts available on their site, e.g. the gmail bubble has notifications, and the Google calendar one has a right click menu on its tray icon that takes you straight to different calendar views. My favourite is "SlimTimer" which is a time tracker with notifications that pop up at customisable intervals to remind you what you were supposed to be in the middle of doing - very handy for distractible people like me!). I think it should be possible to write a simple script that allows you to add a task by right-clicking on the tray icon & perhaps add some menu items that take you straight to various views within Toodledo. Unfortunately, Bubbles doesn't seem to agree with my computer and regularly crashes (luckily the SlimTimer one seems relatively stable), so I've given up on the idea of creating a script for a Toodledo Bubble for the time being, but I'm keeping an eye on it in case they iron our whatever bugs are causing the problem.

There seem to be many satisfied users of Bubbles who don't appear to suffer these crashes, so it's worth checking out if you think this kind of thing would be useful. I can definately recommend the SlimTimer bubble for anyone who wants a simple, user friendly time tracker that has the option to regularly remind you what you were supposed to be doing! (if you want these reminders, make sure you download the version *with* notifications)